U.S. has done too little, too late in India-Pakistan crisis

WASHINGTON — India and Pakistan are within three to four weeks of a foreseeable war that the United States has done too little to prevent. By misreading Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Bush administration has contributed to a dangerous confrontation between two nuclear-armed rivals.

The million troops deployed in the Kashmir theater now balance on a razor’s edge. The winter snows that immobilized them for four months are gone. Extreme heat and monsoon conditions will arrive in a month or so in the region, limiting India’s logistical capabilities and campaign predictability. India’s politically faltering government faces a choice of going to war before that moment — or enduring the embarrassment of ending a costly and seemingly ineffective mobilization.

But India may not wait until the last moment and give up the element of surprise. Another incident in Kashmir like the May 14 guerrilla attack on defenseless Indian women and children in the city of Jammu would almost certainly trigger immediate Indian retaliation.

"The country is ready for war," Indian officials say confidently. Pakistan’s tightly monitored press is featuring usually taboo reports of deployments of troops and weapons such as surface-to-surface Shaheen missiles.

A full war is presumably not Musharraf’s aim. He cannot conquer India. But the Pakistani military ruler has shown in the past two months that when it comes to the half-century conflict over Kashmir, he is an extraordinary risk-taker. He has dared India to fight and has boldly reneged on a promise to the Bush White House to shut down terror camps in Kashmir. The two steps are related.

After internal debate, the U.S. intelligence community now accepts that Musharraf allowed the quiescent guerrilla camps in Kashmir to come back to life in mid-March. Two other Musharraf promises — to prevent cross-border terrorism from Pakistan or Pakistani-controlled territory, and to dismantle and prevent the return of Islamic fundamentalist organizations preaching jihad in Pakistan — have also withered as American attention has been focused on the Middle East.

"The debate about what is going on has been settled," says one U.S. official involved in the contentious discussions here about Musharraf’s dishonored pledge to cut off the help and training that his intelligence services and military give to terrorists in Kashmir and India. "The rate of infiltration into Indian-occupied Kashmir is above the rate of a year ago. What is still being debated is Musharraf’s intention. Is he unable or unwilling to prevent what is happening? And what do we do about either case?"

The effect of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s intense and successful diplomatic intervention last winter to ease tensions has been washed away by U.S. inattention and failure even to acknowledge Pakistan’s subsequent backsliding. "America is either with us or with the terrorists," Omar Abdullah, a rising star in India’s political system, said in Parliament last week as details of the grisly Jammu raid spread.

The attack on an Indian military family housing area by three guerrillas identified in the Indian media as Pakistani citizens could hardly have been more inflammatory. Wives and children of Indian soldiers were butchered. A 2-month-old baby was machine-gunned to death. By coincidence or design, the attackers went to the very limit of the Indian military’s tolerance.

Musharraf’s own assessment of the consequences of such acts remains murky. He may believe that India does not have the will to attack. Or he may believe that Washington needs him too much in the war on al-Qaida and the Taliban to let India come after him. U.S. officials have certainly given him grounds for thinking that.

Or Musharraf may be quite willing to see limited clashes begin in hopes of provoking international intervention in Kashmir, much as Yasser Arafat hopes to draw outside powers into his conflict with Israel.

In 1971, Pakistan launched attacks along India’s western frontier that had no chance of military success. Pakistan’s military rulers, humiliated by India’s easy conquest of their forces in the eastern territory that would become Bangladesh, went to war in a desperate and forlorn bid for outside intervention to save them from defeat and disgrace.

Managing Musharraf and Pakistan’s role in Operation Enduring Freedom is a tricky task. But Powell and his chief aides have devoted little time and energy to that demanding job since mid-February. They are letting events drag them back in belatedly to separate two nuclear-armed antagonists.

Pakistan helped create and foster al-Qaida and the Taliban. It has long used terror as an instrument of state policy to try to break India’s hold on two-thirds of Kashmir that New Delhi controls. Confronted with anything less than unrelenting pressure, Musharraf will keep on gambling, up to the brink and perhaps beyond.

Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.